ATLANTA, Feb. 2 /PRNewswire/ — ATCMonitor.com today announced a major expansion of its critically acclaimed portal to the air lanes surrounding Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest commercial air terminal.

The upgraded website located at http://atcmonitor.com/ adds near real-time radar video and pilot-controller radio communications from the FAA’s Atlanta regional Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) center, to existing coverage of flights being handled by air traffic controllers at the FAA’s Atlanta Center Air Route Traffic Control Center, located in Hampton, Georgia.

Other features include live weather radar maps, aviation news, aerial navigation charts, a discussion forum, a chat line, information on and photos of Hartsfield’s $5.4-billion expansion, and a databank of “how-it-all-works” information about the nation’s Air Traffic Control system.

“The traffic at Hartsfield-Jackson dwarfs what’s going on down on the interstate highways,” says ATCMonitor.com CEO Joel Lesser. “The Atlanta airport handles an average of 240,000 passengers and 2500 takeoffs and landings a day using only four runways. Imagine the gridlock you’d have if 240,000 people tried to move through Atlanta on only four roads.”

“Our goal with ATCMonitor.com is to take people behind the scenes to view the air traffic control system at work from an air traffic controller’s point of view,” Lesser added. “Yes, the radar view of all those airplanes moving precisely across the display is fascinating, but we want this site to be more than interesting. We want it to explain some of the magic behind keeping the skies un-congested.”

ATCMonitor.com allows internet visitors unprecedented access to sights and sounds previously available only to air traffic controllers. Radar pictures and radio transmission available on the FAA-approved and National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA)-endorsed site are virtually live, delayed only momentarily in conformance with federal government regulations.

ATCMonitor.com chose Atlanta as the focus of its one-of-a-kind internet initiative because of the extraordinary volume, density, and complexity of air traffic over, around, and on the ground in Atlanta.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, a 3,750 acre facility with a 2.2 million square foot terminal — the world’s largest — and parking for around 30,000 cars is already mammoth and still growing. A ten-year, $5.4 billion development program consisting of a new international terminal, a new 9,000-foot runway, expansion of existing concourses, and access road and other improvements is already under way.

Air traffic in and around the airport is equally impressive. During peak periods, as many as 1000 aircraft may be approaching or leaving the nearby Peachtree, Georgia-based TRACON’s control area.

“The Atlanta sectors have it all,” says ATCMonitor.com’s Lesser. “The most passengers, the most flights, the latest ATC technology installed in North America’s tallest FAA control tower, a state-of-the-art En-route Air Traffic Control Center and TRACON, and an airfield with planes shuttling into and out of almost 200 gates around the clock. We want to take people where the action is and http://atcmonitor.com/ just happens to be that place.”

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